Tag Archives: obama

These are the hardest moments for neocons and sane people (but I repeat myself). You realize that in Venezuela, in Ukraine, in Syria, in Turkey, in South Sudan, and a dozen other nations there are terrible things going on. That any rational understanding of natural rights and that they apply to all people equally (regardless of what country you live in) and ethics (and the basic tenet that you have to help people when you know about their suffering and are in a position to help them) tells us that we need to do something…

…but reason also tells us that we can’t do anything. Not because there is nothing to do, but because with the leadership we have now any intervention would not only be pointless it would likely make things worse(as occurred with the Arab Spring).

And that’s the problem, there are things to do, things that can improve the situation everywhere, but the idiots we currently have can only muck things up and it may be best to let these atrocities work themselves out. Which is terrible.

It was bad when you have a life long cowardly isolationist (from a family of worthless cowardly isolationists) like Bush try to adopt the mantle of a neoconservative on foreign policy…but not bother to understand the part about long term planning to help build, rebuild and establish functioning constitutional republics that defend the rights of their people. Nope, like all Bush’s, W. didn’t seem to understand long term thinking (like daddy didn’t understand the truth of supply-side realities, and W. also didn’t grasp that tax cuts have to be permanent to have any lasting effect). No let’s just ignore that it was long term involvement, planning and slower turning over of control to the local governments that made Germany and Japan a success…no, let’s just assume that a functioning democratic-republic will just spring up in a couple years (to hell if it took the US over a decade and two Constitutions to get it right). It was bad when this non-neoconservative gave neoconservatives a black eye. But at least we were trying. And even with the complete cluster—- that Iraq and Afghanistan have become there are fewer governments and tyrants actively funding terrorism. There are at least silver linings in these screwups.

But even though Bush was a moron, at least he left things better than they were before (not good by any means, but marginally better than when he got on the scene), he was a genius compared to Obama who makes everything worse. Give Iran money to build nukes. Stop actually gathering needed intelligence on terrorists (while oddly focusing really hard on American citizens…maybe if we tell him that Al-Qaeda is thinking of starting a SuperPAC he might actually go after them). Not backing Britain in their dealing with socialist Argentina. Back stabbing Israel at every single turn because the fact is that with the exception of Ron Paul followers there is only one party I can think of more anti-Semitic than Obama and his Democrats.

Yeah I know everyone is using the excuse that Bush let Putin have parts of Georgia in 2008…but let’s be honest when that happened Bush was entirely out of political capital to use on foreign affairs (not saying he would have done the right thing if he had any chips to play, but we should at least admit realities)…but, as a particular commentator likes to correctly point out “Bad behavior doesn’t excuse other bad behavior.”

Let’s ignore the thousand and one things we could have done over the past 6 years that would have prevented all these things (and make no mistake a strong and intelligent US foreign policy could have prevented all of it).

We could easily impose harsh sanctions against Russia and open every form of oil and natural gas production in the US. This would devastate the Russian economy, keep Europe relatively stable, and work as a shot of adrenaline to the US economy. But we really can’t do that because if we did push for sanctions Obama would probably idiotically engineer sanctions that only annoy Russia and fail to open up US production of energy that would leave Europe even in worse shape than they currently exist.

We could honor our treaty with Poland (you know the one Obama broke) and help them defend themselves. And we could offer to extend that defense treaty to all those other nations that were once part of the Eastern Block we have no intention of doing so. But as experience tells us, Obama would rather give guns to the villains instead of our allies.

We could send arms and support (training, advisors, infrastructure) to Ukraine as a clear sign we are drawing a line in the sand which you will not cross…but we know what happens when Obama draws foreign policy lines.

Hell…we could even be going to the UN asking for meaningless peacekeepers be sent to Crimea to observe the situation. It would be pointless, and would likely be vetoed by Russia, but at least it would be more than rolling over for dead as Barry and Michelle go on separate vacations while the world falls apart.

We could do a lot of things…and we could do it for a lot of nations…because we do have a moral obligation to see liberty and human rights defended and spread over the whole world. But as long as this moron is in charge nothing will get done and pushing to have anything done will only result in even a worse situation occurring because he is too cowardly to do what needs to be done and too stupid to even know what that is or the conspirisists are correct and it is what he wants –one or the other no in-between.

There is a silver lining to this at least in the Ukraine. The fact is that while we should be leading a movement to band the nations of Eastern Europe together, they will probably do that on their own. Also, despite the fact that everyone likes to say that Obama is playing checkers while Putin is playing chess…the fact is that in reality Obama is drooling on himself while Putin is playing tic-tac-toe poorly. This may be a short-term goal for him, but it will strain his already strained economy, and it will likely make Russia not just the target of Islamic radicals in Chechnya but inflame and put Russia right in the crosshairs of al-Qaeda. I think we speak from experience that al-Qaeda is a bitch to deal with when you attack the nations they claim to be from…it will be a complete nightmare for Russia when they even lack the moral and ethical high ground that the US had. Let me know how your population problem is going in ten years Vladimir when you’ve had to sacrifice every young man to holding the nations you’ve invaded to try and reestablish the evil empire. And like Stalingrad, I will be actually quite happy with Russia and al-Qaeda wasting time, money and lives killing each other…it really doesn’t matter who wins so long as both sides lose. Long term, we are lucky that evil may be an outreach program but it also always includes the seeds of its own destruction.

As it is an election year, it is more important than usual to focus on the news so that we can all be better prepared to counter any liberal lie that may come our way…but if you can’t speed read who has time for that? Thus, I’m going to try going back to something I used to do and every week have a highlight of articles you may have missed in paying attention to only the top stories or just didn’t have time for at all. Obviously, if you have time you shouldn’t use just me, but hopefully I’ll turn up one or two pieces that you missed and will enjoy.

Obamacare requires that every person in America buys insurance. This was done because without doing it every insurance provider in the nation would begin losing almost immediately and rather than lose money they would just go Atlas Shrugged on us and close shop…but by having everyone on insurance they at least still make a small profit, but only because you’ve forced millions of people who don’t need insurance onto insurance (but even then only by making everyone pay increased premiums).

The problem with this is that the Constitution gives the government no power to force people to buy something (in fact forcing people to do something against their will is expressly prohibited in the 5th Amendment’s protection of private property, and 13th Amendment). They enforce this mandate by penalizing you if you don’t buy insurance. Again, no Constitutional authority to do this.

Now the Supreme Court and Obamacare got around this by saying this penalty isn’t a fine, it’s a tax (the strangest tax in history, but still a tax). The problem with this is Constitutionally taxes have to originate in House of Representatives and Obamacare originated in the Senate.

So either it’s forcing you to buy something, and is unconstitutional, or it’s a tax in which case the bill was not passed in a constitutional manner.

This is silly. Traditionally rights have been considered things that you are born with or you would have even if there was no civilization around. If you’re alone on an island you still have the rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness. In society no one has the right to take these away from you, which is why these are called negative rights—you have them and no one can negate them. Even if someone has the power to do so no one has the ethical, moral, or political basis to take away by force your negative rights. Ethical government is based on the idea that, being a part of society, you give up a very small amount (not so small these days) of your rights to protect the vast majority of them. At least in the ideal.

Now, personally I don’t think there has ever been a good argument for positive rights, but the bigger problem is that positive rights always infringe upon negative rights. If you have the right to a living wage, then others must provide, and thus must have their property taken away, to provide your living wage. Thus you have no right to property if you have the right to a living wage. If you have a right to health care, then doctors and nurses must treat you or any medical issue (not only life threatening ones, hospitals and doctors were required to treat life threatening issues by law even before Obamacare) whether you can pay or not. This means a doctor cannot choose to not take you as a patient. Thus the right to healthcare means doctors do not have freedom of choice and thus do not have the right to liberty…I believe that’s called slavery. Now you think this may be an extreme example, but whenever positive rights have become laws you see fewer protection of negative rights without exception throughout history.

Also when something is free or perceived as free, as in the case of Obamacare, you always get people wanting more of it.

This will cause more people to go to the doctor (remember there will be fewer of them) for more minor issues. This will cause longer lines and less efficient care, thus treatment quality will go down, and mortality rates will go up. This can be seen in any country with socialized medicine where you see such things as gout go months without treatment (whereas it is almost always immediately caught here) or where due to the wait, limb amputation as a result a diabetes is vastly more common under systems like Obamacare than it has been in the preObamacare American system. (These are just two examples. Every disease gets worse under socialized medicine).

Welcome to Obamacare…can you find your way to a doctor…or will you just fall into the pit of Despair?

You will also have the problem of price control boards. Now, we have always had these in one form or another (but they got really annoying after the government created the dreaded HMO…that’s right the biggest thing people hated in healthcare before Obamacare was also a government created debacle). You buy a certain level of insurance and the insurance company says that due to the level you have bought we will pay X amount of dollars, but no more. This becomes an issue with experimental treatment and long-term problems like cancer. The insurance will pay for your pain meds, as they are required to by your policy, but they will not pay for expensive chemo and radiation (not because they’re heartless but because they would go broke if they paid for everyone who didn’t pay the premiums for that level of care). If you want more coverage, you can always buy more. The problem with Obamacare is that government price control boards are going into place and will say what you can and can’t have for treatment, if you are in the government exchanges. The difference here is if an insurance company denied to pay, you could always pay out of pocket, under Obamacare the price control board’s decision is final (if try to pay out of pocket you are again subject to fines, and rationing will have made these procedures already more expensive which makes already expensive procedures astronomically unreachable, so it’s the same thing as making them illegal). This is why they have earned the moniker “death panels” because if they deny your claim, you die…if the insurance company denied you, you still had other options and it was up to you if you wanted to spend your life savings on buying those extra few months.

The unfortunate effect will be that as medical prices rise, what is covered by the price control boards will contract drastically. Thus even more things will become deadly.

There are a lot of other ways it will ruin the medical profession, but I think you get the point.

Finally the economic reasons why it’s bad.

Ignoring the fact that higher death rates may have some negative economic effects…it’s just bad in every way for the economy.

Obamacare requires businesses with a certain number of employees to buy insurance at a certain level for their employees.

As premiums rise, as I stated above, this means it becomes more and more expensive to hire an employee. If you earn $45,000 plus benefits right now, it actually costs your employer around $60,000 between salary, benefits, and social security to employee you. As premiums rise so does the cost of employing each person.

Whether businesses care about their employees or not, they first have to stay in business. They are hesitant to hire new people as new hires also cost money for training and you usually aren’t getting the full effect of the employee for a few months until they get into a rhythm with the system of your company. So you’re taking a loss with each new employee even before Obamacare. The raised premiums then mean with each new employee will have to provide more for the company to be worth their total cost. Thus you tend to fire the lower performers because you’re not getting your money’s worth. So fewer people hired, more people fired. Also since you have to provide fewer benefits for part time workers than full time, you are more likely to hire people only part time. We have seen all of this over the last few years.

Small businesses are hurt too because a small business can only grow to a certain size before it has to provide benefits. So when it reaches that point, a business can either not grow, which hurts economic growth, or suddenly provide full medical coverage…and no small business at that size can afford to make that immediate jump in the cost of each employee. Again we have slowly seen the effects this has on the economy.

This leads to overall negative ripple effects in prosperity, take home pay, innovation, research…it creates a bad economy all around.

Some might argue that we should punish those who have done so. That we need to go in to save lives.

But they’re looking at it wrong. While we do as decent people have a responsibility to stop genocide, that isn’t enough, we have to make sure we can actually improve the situation. The question shouldn’t necessarily be is Assad (or the rebels) killing people, it should be, can we stop the killing? In Germany, Iraq, and Afghanistan there were either prodemocracy forces (and in those last two I will fully admit we botched any attempt to rally those forces and form a real government)…and in Japan we had the wherewith-all to stay in charge for over a decade to ensure a stable government was left in place. The problem with Syria is that it’s a choice between Assad and his Iran/Hamas terrorists backers and the Rebels (read Al-Qaeda)…if either side wins, they’ll use the chemical weapons and kill the people of Syria and probably other nations…and America at this point (even if we had a leader and not an idiot in charge) doesn’t have the resolve to stay the time needed and spend the money required to take over Syria and build a system that will end the killing of people. The fact is that no matter what we do, people are going to die. If we help people die, if we don’t help people die. There is no way out of this that can stop the killing.

Kerry was against intervention over chemical weapons before he was for it…and he was for it before he was against it…

Now some people, whose opinions I respect, suggest we should go in and just bomb Assad’s ability for air dominance, level the playing field and let the rebels and Assad fight it out on equal terms. I can see the wisdom in this…but this assumes a leader who knows what do to and how to handle such a campaign. And here’s the problem if you had such a leader my NeoCon side might just say, why half-ass it?, go in occupy the nation and set up a democracy…but lacking such a leader I don’t know if I can even trust the idiot we have now to level the playing field…honestly has he done anything else right in foreign policy? Which again leads me back to it’s best to stay out of this mess.

The silver lining to not doing anything at the moment is that this is Hamas and Al-Qaeda killing each other…which saves us the time and trouble of doing it.

But let’s talk about what we should do if reality had no bearing on this (or, say, if we had done the intelligent thing and elected a leader and good man and not a buffoon and corrupt hack). Now Syria would present it’s own challenges but I think the best way we should do with Syria, if we were going to get involved is to look at our two most recent mistakes, Iraq and Afghanistan, and see where we screwed up there.

Now let’s first deal with some of the points of why we went. We went to take out terrorist threats (and both nations did present such a threat), we went to do the ethical thing and stop genocide, and we went to spread democracy. All could have been accomplished if Bush and/or Obama had had even half a brain between them…but Obama likes to grovel and apologize for America’s virtue and Bush was an isolationist (just look at his debate with Gore where he said he didn’t want to engage in nation building…so stop blaming NeoConservatives for Bush’s idiocy, he was never one of us and never will be). It was the right war to fight.

It was also fought well. The military is not the part to blame, it is the diplomats and politicians who screwed the occupation up, not the war itself.

Now let’s review what we should have done but didn’t. And, in terms of full disclosure, I honestly thought we would have been bright enough to do these things when I gave my support for these wars…I thought that even if Bush was dumb enough to not know to do these, his advisors would at least be bright enough…boy was I wrong.

Do you trust this man to do anything right? Do you even trust to not make it worse?

The first thing we should not have done was turn over Iraq and Afghanistan to Iraqi and Afghani control so soon. We were in control of Germany for year (and only gave them independence to gain their alliance in the Cold War) and were in complete control of Japan for nearly a decade. We should have remained in political and military control of Iraq and Afghanistan for nearly a decade as well. It takes time to rebuild the infrastructure of a nation, it takes time to get the culture used to the principles of rule of law and a democratic-Republic, it takes time to properly write a Constitution. All of these were rushed for political convenience. And that is partly what ultimately made these situations so terrible.

The nations should have been broken up. Their current borders are arbitrary creations of colonialism and forced numerous ethnic and religious groups that loathe each other. Pluralism is also superior, but it grows best naturally when two group both doing well see each other as equals that both can grow and learn from, not from being forced together. Iraq, should have been three nations (Kurds, Sunni, Shia)…Afghanistan should have likely been broken into a Southern and Northern part (although I’ll admit my knowledge of the breakdown of clans, ethnicities and religious divisions in Afghanistan is not as deep as it could be). My point here being that smaller less diverse areas are easier to administrate, easier to work with, easier to maintain stability it…and if there is terrorist activity in one it does not mean that destabilizes the whole operation (for instance Kurdistan would have likely been stable, and possibly even economically prosperous very quickly which would have led to more stability in the whole area and an ally we can count on).

We should have never let the armies disband as quickly as we did. We should have kept them as POWs vetting every single one of them before releasing them. This would have delayed the terrorists attacks.

I agree completely with the surges, only disagreeing that they should have been done earlier and probably to an even greater degree.

We should have burned each and every poppy field in all of Afghanistan to the ground and shot any drug lord who complained. The terrorists live off the funds of the drug trade and one of our first goals should have been to deny them any and all funds.

The Peace Corp should have been recalled for training in Arabic, Farsi, Pashto, Dari, (and anything else we needed) and then sent to Afghanistan and Iraq. There is no point in having a Peace Corp in helping in social and economic development if you’re not going to use it where it was needed most.

Border walls. As we have learned in the US, there is nothing so important as a border wall…more so when dealing with terrorists. We should have been building walls on the border of every single nation, starting with the borders of Iran, Pakistan, Syria. If we had done this the terrorist activity would have been drastically reduced (as most of it came from Iran, Pakistan and Syria)…and if there had been a division of the nations we should have had walls between them as well to help stop the spread of terrorism.

With staying longer, our first responsibility should have been building up roads, water, electricity, schools, hospitals and the basic of industry…the infrastructure needed to support a republic of law. Training the military and police should have been a distant second (because when you rush that, you let the terrorist infiltrate easily and attack us from within, as we’ve seen all too well) as the military can handle that for a longer period as we’ll be there for a while.

There is no way we should have ever left Iraq without gaining a permanent military base and the same goes for Afghanistan. One of the only reasons why these invasions made sense in the long run from a tactical stand point was gaining foot holds to ensure stability in the area (would Syria be as violent as it is right now if there was a permanent US base with missile launch capability just a few minutes from it’s borders?)

This is a picture of the handy work of Obama’s allies in Syria…the massacre of Christians for no other reason than their religion. Yes we should help these people.

Among stronger women’s right pushes than we made, we should have made it a requirement that both nations add full rights to women and some version of our burning bed justifications (which more or less makes it justifiable for a woman who is afraid of her husband beating or murdering her to kill her husband…and then we should have probably armed every woman as we could have). This would hopefully have cleared out a lot of the worst bastards we would have to worry about, and the scum who objected should have just been summarily shot as well because you know they’re shit who would be nothing but a blight on humanity. (And I can hear some liberal whiny about it’s their culture who are you to judge. I’m a human being with a brain, that’s who. Any man, any law, any religion that says women are inferior to men is shit and deserves to be wiped off the Earth with extreme prejudice.) We should probably also have installed a lot of women in positions of power, those who objected can be shot. (This is more to quickly identify the terrorist scum and quickly eliminate them).

We should never have stopped it being a major function of the military and CIA to gather intelligence. We should be capturing terrorists leaders and water-boarding every last piece of information out of them. The problem with drones isn’t their use or their death toll…it’s that they’re being used in lieu of gathering intelligence which actually (causes more death in the long run) kills even more people in the long run.

(On a side note) We should have backed, supported and armed the revolution that started in Iran. Conversely we should not have given moral support to the largely terrorist led Arab Spring.

We should have gone in and still should be going in with the mentality that first and foremost this is a war. If you are dealing with rational people then negotiate with them, but otherwise there is no retreat, no fallback, no quarter and all that is acceptable is either complete and unconditional surrender or every member of your opposition dead. No negotiations with the Taliban, no playing nice for Iran and Pakistan. This is a war, we are in the right (or at least we could have been) and we will not stop until every tyrant is dead or in jail and every innocent citizen enjoys full human rights.

Now, while Syria presents it’s own challenges and idiosyncrasies, but it is these general principals that should guide the occupation and rebuilding of any nation. And the question you need to ask is, do you think Obama has the spine and intelligence to do any of this? Do you think he even has the brains to carry out attacks on Assad’s military targets?

For me the answer is simple. No. I would love to spread liberty and end genocide everywhere…but from what I have seen of this nation, and especially Obama, we don’t know how to do it, we don’t have the patience it takes to do it, and right now we certainly aren’t in an economic position to do it. In an ideal world intervention is what we should do, but the realities of the present state that our current situation will only lead to making things worse.

Liberals are in a tizzy. How dare Romney critique Obama on apologizing for free speech. How dare Romney criticize Obama when a U.S. diplomat is dead as a result of Obama’s complete incompetence. How dare Romney push to get a man out of office whom he believes, justifiably so, is so inept at everything he does that to let him have another 4 years in the Oval Office would lead to irreparable damage to both this nation and our allies. How dare he! For shame, Romney, for shame!

So no shocker liberals are idiots for multiple reasons, but let’s go over a few of them.

The first, and possibly my favorite: How dare he use the murder of people to help himself. The first thing I try to do in an argument, believe it or not, is to look at it from the other person’s point of view (you’d be surprised how this makes you feel other people are idiots more often than it builds tolerance, but that’s another discussion for another day). So liberals from Romney’s point of view Obama is inept, putting the lives of U.S. citizens at risk, and the first inclination of both he and his administration is to apologize to butchers at any and every chance. If you were Romney, the only ethical thing to do is to get Obama out of office through any and all ethical means. * Bringing up Obama’s many failures is a an ethical and important way to get rid of the ass.** To do anything less would be to allow such a terrible executive to stay in power—to not make a point of this would have been to allow Obama to stay in power, to actively work for what Romney believes will harm this country—in short to not bring it up would be unethical. Yes, for shame that Romney did the only ethical thing available to him.

And both parties are guilty of this. Right now, it’s being highlighted that the media didn’t throw this hissy fit when Kerry used dead soldiers in Iraq to hit Bush. () Yes some Republicans said it was classless and tacky, I don’t recall doing so myself because quite frankly if you think the war isn’t worth it that’s a damn valid point. I thought the war was worth it, and it was—granted it would have been better if it had been carried out by someone with a brain, but just because Bush was a moron doesn’t negate the fact that Kerry would have been even more incompetent at bringing democracy to Iraq. So Kerry bringing up dead soldiers or not isn’t relevant (the fact that Kerry seemed shocked that people die in war however might be a good point of showing how dumb Kerry was) to the argument, fewer people were dying because Saddam was gone. Now any Republicans who had a problem with Kerry doing this back then would be hypocrites to complain about Democrats outrage now, just as the media is hypocritical of showing outrage for one but not the other.

The fact is that there is really no shameful behavior in a campaign there is only a question of relevant and effective. Bringing up Obama’s failures is relevant if you’re argument is that Obama is utterly incompetent, which he is. Bringing up dead soldiers in Iraq is relevant if your argument is that the Iraq war was wrong, which it wasn’t (it was just managed by idiots). Shame is only relevant when you’re acting against what you believe, which in both cases was not the fact. However Kerry’s central argument was dumb so this point was irrelevant. It’s just like liberals now bringing up Romney’s tax returns. Their argument is they need to see them to determine if Romney has done anything illegal…which is dumb…if a candidate is that rich they’ve got good lawyers and accountants, which means even if they are doing as many illegal back door deals as say, Nancy Pelosi, their lawyers and accountants are not going to be dumb enough to put them in their tax returns. Further you don’t think the IRS under Obama didn’t already go through them with a fine tooth comb? Trust me if there was stuff there Obama would have already leaked it…I mean it’s not like Romney’s taxes are a classified state secret (and we know Obama has no qualms about leaking that).

Now you can argue that Romney doing this might not have been effective and counter to his goal of unseating Obama, as many in the McCain/RINO wing of the Republican party seem to be doing (yes because we should listen to McCain advisors on how to run a campaign because they clearly know how to win…) but really that’s tangential to the faux outrage by the Democrats.

Second you have people getting upset about insulting the president (yes Republicans were guilty of this too during Bush). I’m sorry but I live in a Constitutional Republic. The president and politicians work for me, not the other way around. They are not gods, they are not kings or nobility; they are human beings. And they deserve to be called out on their failings. Due to their position of service they deserve to be called out on it even more as they are my employee and when they do such a terrible job they deserve to be told what utter !@#$ing scum and idiots they are. And like the outrage over calling out people when others have died, the only question is, is it relevant. Calling Bush Hitler for defending liberty…doesn’t quite make sense (an idiot he was, evil no…of course liberals were seldom calling him an idiot for the right reasons). Calling Obama a socialist when he acts and says everything a socialist would, perfectly justified. ()

2. Riots began in Cairo and Libya. The embassy repeats the statement several times.

3. It became known that a US citizen had died in Libya (it was not known at the time that it was the Ambassador).

4. The Obama administration, after some dithering, has the initial apology removed.

5. Romney issued a condemnation of the initial apology.

6. The day after this all happens Romney gives a speech calling for leadership and condemning Obama for not offering any, and Obama gives a speech that once again apologizes for the fact that we have free speech.

The problem here for liberals is that because the apology came before the attacks that Romney’s statement is wrong and false.

Let’s deal with this.

I’ve tried to watch the video, I might condemn it for poor production value or the fact that it was clearly made by a moron, but by doing so I would be doing it as a private citizen. A US Embassy has no right to critique, let alone condemn the expression of free speech by citizens of the US. Furthermore as this was made by Coptic Christians who are being slaughtered by the Muslim Brotherhood, you might understand why they’re taking their frustration out on Muslims (it’s the only religion I know of that was founded by a child raping butcher who personally ordered the genocidal massacre of the Jews of Medina…but I’m sure it’s a religion of peace having started with such an upstanding beginning). But my point in bringing this up is I’ve haven’t heard of any condemnations by the US Ambassador condemning the abuse of Jews, Coptic Christians, or hell even women by the Muslim Brotherhood…but let’s condemn people for using their Constitutional Rights. It also makes such fascinating comments like “Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy.” (Didn’t notice much of it in Charlotte when half the party objected to the word God being put in the platform…that was unfair actually…they were booing the inclusion of Jerusalem being listed as the capital of Israel. So I apologize for saying the Democrats are against religion. They’re not. They’re just against Jews.) Also I hate to tell them this respect for religions isn’t a cornerstone of America (it’s also a republic not a democracy)…right to express your beliefs is a cornerstone, but I don’t have to respect you when you do. I have every right to think you’re a complete moron or even evil (and before you begin to argue with me on that, you first have to tell me you respect the beliefs of the Westboro Baptists and that you would condemn anyone who would try to denigrate them for their batshit crazy ideas). I will defend your right to express your dipshit ideas, so long as such expression does not harm me or others, but don’t expect me to respect you for being dead wrong.

And Romney’s response.

Okay so since the attacks occurred after the apology it might be a little out of line that Romney said the administration’s “first response” to the attack was not to condemn them but to apologize. Yeah sure the embassy repeated the message after the attacks began but I mean it’s not like the Secretary of State issued an apology of her own after the attacks had already begun at about 7:54pm…oh wait…what…she did? Oh shit, I guess he’s right their first reaction was to condemn free speech rather than condemn the butchers who throw a hissy fit over a video that one would otherwise ignore if you weren’t crazy (you know the same butchers murdering Coptic Christians and putting Jews and women in their sights).

And Obama again apologized for the First Amendment‎, “We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others.”

Question, which of these two sounds closer to “I may not agree with what you say but will defend your right to say it to the death” which is supposedly the American tradition that keeps the Westboro Baptists from being beaten to death.

So all that is left is Romney right that this is symptom of a greater amount of incompetence on Obama’s part. Yes it is. Because it is Obama who has attempted 4 years of appeasement to no avail. Because it is Obama who gave help to the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya and Egypt and allowed these al-Qaeda tied Islamists to take over (yes the two countries had dictators, but US policy should not be to change one dictator for a worse one). Obama in turn left pro-democracy forces in Iran be slaughtered. He is currently backstabbing our ally Israel at every turn. He is chummy with a Russia that is giving nuclear capabilities to Iran and helping Syrian tyrants slaughter people (I’m not thrilled with either side in Syria, but that doesn’t mean I want outside forces helping to encourage the pointless slaughter). He is the one giving money to the butchers in Egypt. He and his administration are responsible for their not being a Marine contingent in Libya to defend the ambassador but only local hired help…who may have been involved in the attack.

I could go on and I probably will later. But on numerous levels the administration may not have caused the riots but it has done everything in its power to make sure the butchers behind these riots came to power and even today this administration is giving them cover and blaming things like free speech as the cause, not a culture of barbarism in countries run by tyrants.

And to attack Romney and not Obama is either rank hypocrisy or utter cluelessness. Either way, shame on you liberals. Shame. Obama created the situation that killed the ambassador by being weak, by backing butchers, and by apologizing for America.

*You could assume that Romney is not ethical, out for power for power’s sake, and has no principles…however, there is no evidence to justify such a claim. He gives overly generously to charity and does not live in garish style, so greed doesn’t seem to be a factor. I can’t find any evidence of cronyism in his administration as Governor. Nor does he seem centered on himself at every moment, so ego doesn’t seem to be his motivation. Now those things do seem to drive other people, but I see no evidence of it in Romney, so assuming he’s not acting out of what he believes to be ethical duty seems a foolish assumption.

**Democrats, don’t like being called asses or jackasses? Too bad, you’re the ones who put it on the letterhead. Or have you repudiated the jackass for the ostrich?

What do you hear little children say all the time – “it’s not fair”. But we thought that you were not supposed to grow up and learn that life is not fair – nor is it meant to be!

I hear Democrats, President Obama and others using versions of this phrase on almost a daily basis now.

Not wanting to go into all the individual points this phrase is used for I want to just deal with the concept of “what is fair”.

Is it fair that some people are better looking then others? Is it fair that some people are downright unattractive?

Is it fair that some people have great bodies and most of us don’t? Is it fair that some people can eat all kinds of things and not put on weight while others of us just look at food and seem to put on weight?

Is it fair that some people can go all night and day and seem to have everlasting energy while others of drag along on a daily basis?

Is it fair that some people get sick when other do not?

Is it fair that some people are smarter then other people?

Is it fair that some people have great athletic ability and others of us are uncoordinated morons?

Is it fair that some people know things that others do not?

Is it fair that some people inherit money while the majority of us need to work for it? Is it fair that some people are able to invent or think of an invention and make lots of money? Is it fair that some people become great actors and make all kinds of money and most don’t? Is it fair that some people successfully build a business empire and make loads of money while most of us don’t?

Is it fair that a lot of us must pay taxes while others do not have to? Is it fair that taxes are based on our incomes rather then our productivity or looks or weight or what the government actually needs to run just the areas designated in the constitution?

Is it fair that I am never hungry and many others are daily?

Is it fair that I have access to great medicine while many others don’t ?

Is it fair that I have religious freedom and many others don’t?

Is it fair that I am a woman and men seem to rule the world?

Is it fair that children must follow rules? Is it fair that I cannot have as much as others? Is it fair that life is not minute-by-minute what I want it to be?

Is it fair that there are poor people in the world? Is it fair that all people do not have a sense of humor similar to my own? Is it fair that everyone does not want to live the way I choose?

Is it fair that someone else’s needs are more important then mine?

This list could go on and on…..

Get over it – life is not fair in any aspect – it is just life and you can do whatever you want or are capable of doing with it – so enjoy and make the most out of it without requiring me to participate in you life!

Any politician using these types of phrases should be immediately removed as they are not mature enough to lead anyone particularly themselves….. is that FAIR??????

Okay Romney won. (Even with Rick call in the Dems). For those of us who support Romney (i.e. those of us who actually looked at his record instead of swallowing what the media is trying to force feed us) this is a good day…

Mr. President

But to the rest of the Republican Party, the Newt supporters, the Santorum supporters (those who aren’t Democrats), the Paul supporters, we need to talk. Guys, look, you’re just not going to get it. The wins tonight give Romney another boost and hurt your guys even more. Before tonight he had 99 delegates. Tonight he got 29 from Arizona and will probably get around 15 for Michigan. Add to that he’s ahead in Puerto Rico (23 delegates), Maryland (37), D.C. (19), Delaware (17), California (172), New Jersey (50), and Utah (40) and those are all winner-take-all primaries. That’s 501 delegates of the needed 1144. Wisconsin is the only other winner-take-all state with only 42 delegates. Now add in his commanding leads in Massachusetts (41) and Virginia (49) and Mitt’s already got over half of the votes he needs locked down. (When you factor in all the proportional votes from Super Tuesday (480, counting MA and VA which we know Mitt’s going to win) and add in all the other winner-take-all states Mitt will likely have close to 700 (quite possibly well over 700, but I’m being generous to Newt and Rick) delegates locked down by the end of Super Tuesday. Which would mean of the 1103 delegates up for grabs Mitt would only have to get another 444 (give or take how many off from 700 he has) . Wow, only 40% of the delegates. I’m sure that will be so difficult especially after Newt and Rick go bankrupt as they’re about to any day now. Face it. Romney is going to be the nominee. There will be no brokered convention, there will be no split party. Romney’s it. He’s also the one that Obama is afraid of!

Now you have three options. You can pout and do nothing. You can continue attacking Romney and do Obama’s work for him. You can work to make sure we win the House and the Senate.

I understand if you can’t get behind Romney (well actually I can’t in this particular case, but as I would not vote for Santorum if he were the nominee I’m not going to say you must vote for Romney or work to get him elected if he were the nominee…although my anti-Santorum stance is based on reason, facts, and patriotism…your anti-Romney bias is based on what again? Lunacy? Anyway…) . But even if you don’t like Romney pouting helps no one. Civic duty requires that you participate actively in government in any way you can.

And attacking Romney is also not a valid option as it only helps Obama. Levin, Hanity, Malkin, Shapiro, Murdoch, Limbaugh, Michael Reagan* I’m talking to you. Shut the hell up. Don’t like him. Fine, don’t support him. But that doesn’t mean you help our mutual enemy. Even all of the Newt and Santorum supporters out there need to get a clue that as many problems as they have against Romney (all of them justified by lies, half-truths and misinformation) he’s better than Obama. If you don’t like Romney, please just spend the rest of the year until November attacking Obama and his cronies and ONLY Obama and his cronies. Hell, day after the election I’ll join you in being a critic of President Romney when he does the wrong thing, as I will critique any president when they screw up…but until we get Obama out hold off on attacking Romney, please, for the good of the country—you know that thing you claim to love (although by supporting Santorum I’m not really seeing it).

The third option, the one everyone who doesn’t like Romney should be taking, is making sure you do everything in your power to make sure that the House stays in Republican control and that the Republicans take hold in the Senate. According to RealClearPolitics 5 seats up for election are safe Republican seats with another 8 in the toss up category (and 4 Democratic seats are in the Lean Democrat category). The goal, for those of you who don’t want to back Romney should be to make sure that both House and Senate are staunchly conservative, Tea Party Conservative, not just Republican. So, playing in your ball park for just a second, if Romney is the flip-flopping politician you claim he is (even though he’s not) then he will have no choice but to always veer conservative as that is the only thing he will be able to do with a conservative Congress. Hitting Romney will only waste resources in getting what you want, conservative policies. And to those commentators I mentioned, given that you’re all very well off and you’ve already hurt this party with you divisive rhetoric, you should be donating the maximum to every major Senate and House race you can—that is the only way you can make up for this draw out violation of the 11th Commandment (especially considering most of you are backing an extreme economic liberal like Santorum).

So it’s up to you. Show you care about this country or continue hitting Romney. Your choice.

*On a side note I would like to take the time to point out that Michael Reagan’s endorsement of Newt shows that intelligence may be more dependent on genetics than environment.

Ugh…I hate social issues. I would love it if everyone could just keep their personal lives personal and not worry about what other people are doing so long as they’re not hurting anyone. And while I am quite the civil libertarian in caring about other people’s lives it might have something to do that my personal life could not be more bland and conservative…which may be why I couldn’t care about other people’s lives.

But because of Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Dumber (otherwise known as Obama and Santorum, I’m not sure which is which) and their ilk there will be no end to the discussion of these otherwise stupid topics for weeks if not months….no, no let’s not talk about saving the economy or dealing with absolute evil abroad, birth control and gay marriage is far more important than whether or not there will actually be a first world society in a generation. Far more important.

I’ve dealt with Obama’s overstep of executive authority in the guise of an attack on religious freedom so I guess it is now time to once again take on Santorum. Of course that’s a whole mess of issues right there. Well…let’s go to a few quotes:

…and if you think those quotes have a distinct communist/collectivist call for 1984, Brave New World, or Anthem I wouldn’t blame you. Really I’m fascinated to hear that marriage has nothing to do with love (makes you wonder what his home life is like…I’ve got an idea let’s see if his wife or daughters ever smile while on camera in a way that isn’t obviously forced to see how happy that home life is.) So in Rick Santorum’s mind you are here only to have children to propagate society and we give special privileges to these breeders…(It makes you really frightened of his call to TRIPLE the tax credit for children…because in a time when any right thinking conservative wants to lower taxes and CLOSE all loopholes, he wants to open loopholes with a crowbar so as to encourage massive overpopulation because it’s working so well for the third world). Okay we can agree that Rick Santorum doesn’t have a single neuron firing in that head of his. But that still doesn’t put the general issue of marriage off the table even if I’m Santorum is lord high king of the idiots. So let’s talk marriage…

Yes marriage is an important function of society. Rick is wrong about it being the basis of society, that has always been and always will be the individual…but individuals need human companionship (usually in the form of friendship and marriage, and if they’re one in the same, then you’re blessed). Now is marriage only for the “uniting together to be open to children, to further civilization in our society”? Not really. People were having children and caring for them long before marriage, although marriage does help raising them, certainly, no one would argue that. But it is not having a mother and father that helps, it’s having two parents that helps (increased income, increased ability for child care, increased experience) and anyone who thinks that gay people make bad parents isn’t just crazy, they’re flying in the face of a boat load of research (Just one example here). But raising children isn’t the only thing marriage is for. If Santorum wanted to ever crack a history book (which I don’t think he has ever done given his perverted views on the Founding Fathers view of liberty ) he might learn that property rights have traditionally had far more to do with marriage than children do…but that would require Santorum to care about property rights, which are an individual right and as he has much respect for individual rights as any communist or Asharite. And while history is filled with moments where society progressed just fine without any strict government rules on marriage I would be foolish to say that marriage isn’t a great support for society. However if Santorum and his followers think that gay marriage is a danger to marriage, or even if it’s that relevant in the face of other government hits at marriage, then they’re idiots.

But I will still admit that marriage, and a two parent family is important to a functioning society. You’d be a damn fool to deny that…but then again both social conservatives and social liberals are damn fools given how they act. Social liberals are idiots for what they’ve already done to weaken those social structures (and I’ll get to that in just a minute) and social conservatives are idiots for fighting a defensive war against gay marriage (which has nothing to do with the strength of the social institution, but it is very visible which suggest that their cause is more cynical demagoguery than heartfelt concern) rather than an offensive war against the liberal policies that actually have done harm to marriage and society.

But back to my statement about liberals actually having done some stuff have actually done to undermine the social institution of marriage (hint gay marriage isn’t going to be anywhere on this list).

Welfare and the Great Society. Let’s pay unwed mothers money for having children. That makes sense. Because every economist from any school, be it Keynesian, Chicago or Austrian, will tell you that when you subsidize a behavior or product you get more of it. Subsidize unwed children, guess what, you de-incentivize actually getting married or waiting until marriage to have children. (This would also be tied to my opinion that Rick Santorum’s idea to triple the child tax credit when we have an over population problem is, well, brainless). Really brain dead is that we pay for anything more than the first pregnancy. I can see an argument for a safety net to help women who have had an accident, been dumped by the loser who got them pregnant, and need some help…one time is an accident (although I would prefer these to be run by counties and cities…not a distant bureaucracy in states and at the federal level). But not two times. And definitely not more than two.

Now if social conservatives really wanted to care about the well being of children and the defense of marriage as a social institution they would once again push for welfare reforms. One that cut people off after the first pregnancy, ones that vigorously track down deadbeat dads (I wouldn’t mind upping what the minimum monthly payment is and bringing back debtors prison for those who won’t pay). Or requiring the welfare recipients attend GED or job training to help ensure they get off welfare if they want to continue getting their check. Or how about this one—we’ll keep track of every dollar you get in welfare payments you get from the government and the minute you start making over let’s say $25,000 a year the government will deduct 1% of your check until you’ve paid back what you took out, interest free because we’re not monsters (and the percentage of your check would go up slightly say 3% at $30,000 so forth and so on) this way no would ever view welfare as a free ride, thus removing many of the incentives for taking it. But right now I’m hearing more about those evil, evil gays (who seem to be decent parents and no worse as couples than their straight counterparts) as what is ruining marriage. Yeah couldn’t be the financial incentives against being married when having children.

Oh and speaking of financial incentives, why is that the call to end the marriage penalty at all levels has kind of disappeared? As I recall the law passed under Bush to end the marriage penalty had a sunset date…isn’t that coming up? How about this, offer a tax discount for those who get married. Watch people get married and stay married when there are real financial incentives to do so. Will some people get married for reasons other than love? Probably, but how is that different from right now? If you want to promote something don’t punish it. But you haven’t heard that from social conservatives, now have you. Hell, given the fact that children of single parent households have a higher likelihood of committing a crime, then financially incentivizing marriage would probably pay for the reduction in revenue via a drop in paying for imprisonment (among a whole mountain of secondary benefits, that was just the first one that came to me, trust me it would pay for itself ten times over).

I could go on, how Social Security and Medicare encourage people to dump bonds with their parents when they got old rather than bringing them into the household in a more stable extended family, how the government support for the liberal Teacher’s unions worked to destroy parental responsibility in raising their children, and a few other programs…but I think you get the point. If social conservatives really cared about the state of marriage and the social benefits that the family brings there are things they could be doing that would be incredibly effective in strengthening the social institution. But they would rather focus on something that has NOTHING to do with the strength of marriage. (And liberals don’t go feeling self-satisfied about that last sentence, you actually have done some damage to the social institution of marriage, just because the conservatives are idiots and not calling you on it doesn’t make you less guilty.

Now social conservatives will probably come back with some stupid “gay marriage is the straw that will break the camel’s back” kind of argument. But as we know in this case I think social conservatives are idiots. If they really cared about the state of marriage and the need of married couple to properly raise children they would be attacking the liberal entitlement culture and not worrying about what gay people do.

Up next, why the Court decisions on Prop. 8 is actually the last thing the gay community should want because it’s going to hurt them…because the social liberal also need to be hit (with a peppering of insults against the right)

But I guess they were lying, given all the votes I’m seeing for Gingrich and Santorum as they are none of those things…whereas I seem remember there is a candidate who meets that criteria. Santorum is a career politicain, who loves big government, always voted for unions, hates the idea of American Individualism (kind of like Obama), and has a track record of being bought and paid for by donors. And do I need to go into Newt?

There is one conservative candidate. Mitt Romney.

But if we want to be the party that votes only on backward social issues or for a fat glory hound…then I guess we want another four years of Obama, or at the very least if we choose Santorum or Gingrich, we deserve another four years of Obama for our rank idiocy and hypocrisy against our supposed principles.

The media wants to focus on his statement that “One of the things about being president is you get better as time goes on[.]” Which means that in six to seven terms he might know his ass from a hole in the ground. But there was actually a far dumber quote given in Obama’s recent interview.

You have to love the “it turns out” part, translation, “I’d never read the damn thing because I never thought it was important, still really don’t.” It turn out? Basic high school government class would teach you that the system was designed to limit power…how exactly does a Constitutional attorney not know this. Really makes you wonder what those college transcripts would show.

But then there is the “more difficult to bring about change than I would like sometimes” part. Translation: “I hate the fact that the public doesn’t like my ideas and voted in a Republican House for express intent of stopping me from doing whatever I want. Don’t they know I’m smart and they’re dumb and they should simply do whatever I want whenever I want.” All hail Obama Caesar!

I still haven’t figured out if this man is more arrogant than he is stupid or more stupid than he is arrogant…but either way, I hope he keeps talking as every time he opens his mouth it’s like a massive donation to the Romney 2012 campaign.

Now I’m sure that Newt will call this “Right wing social engineering” and has made it all to clear that he will not have anything of its kind in his administration, but I want you to hear this man speak about what actually raises people out of poverty, about what actually creates jobs…and if you don’t like it, hey vote for Obama or Newt, they’re both opposed to this idea.

Now you show me someone else who talks passionately and knowledgeably about capitalism and I’ll consider them. Until then, Mitt is my man.

So we shouldn’t nominate Romney because he lost to McCain because McCain lost to Obama.

Okay let’s see if that is a valid argument by looking at history. Obama has been compared to Carter a lot (I think it has something to do with the socialism, incompetence, destroying the economy, arrogance and Jew-hating), so let’s see if you had used that argument in 1980:

“Why would you nominate the guy who lost to the guy who lost to Carter.”

The guy who lost to Carter in 1976 was Gerry Ford. And the guy who lost the nomination battle with Gerry Ford was the former Governor of uber-liberal California, Ronald Reagan. So by using Newt’s logic, we should never have nominated Reagan because he obviously couldn’t beat Carter because he couldn’t even beat a wimpy moderate like Gerry Ford.

Now I’m not saying that Romney is Reagan (although wouldn’t it be cool if he showed us a side of himself we never saw before once in the White House) but the fact is that Newt argument is BS. And for a history professor, and a supposed Reagan Republican, not to mention someone who was in the House at the time, to not know how stupid his argument is…it’s just sad.

Six years ago, 2006, if you had asked me who I wanted for President my smartass answer would probably have been “Anyone but Hillary.” Because why would I want a left-leaning pragmatist without a shred of moral or political principles running the country. Yes I wanted Rudy, but I would have said I would be willing to take a lot of second tier alternatives.

Then a funny thing happened. A Democratic challenger arose who was not a pragmatist with many left-leaning tendencies but a full blown socialist who was a true believer in the Marxist trash he was peddling…and Hillary started to look pretty good…but what did I have to worry about, I mean usually I vote Republican and I’ll be able to do that this time. Oh wait. Then the GOP in its usual level of “let’s-snatch-defeat-from-the-jaws-of-victory” stupidity nominated John McCain. A corrupt liberal who sides with Democrats at the drop of a hat, desperate to get the approval of the mainstream media, who has declared war on the First Amendment before he ran for president through McCain-Feingold, (who through his recent defense of NDAA has declared war on the entire bill of rights), and let us not forget both in the past and present will never miss a chance to sell out our troops and condemn them (given this most recent betrayal of the armed services and NDAA I can say without a moment’s hesitation the world would be a better place if we had just left him to rot in that hole in North Vietnam). In short I really hate John McCain (almost as much as I hate his pick for VP, who is also a completely unprincipled excuse for a human pretending to be a conservative).

And as the primary was ending in 2008 I was really hoping I could vote for Hillary. She was a pragmatist which made her better than GOP tweedle-dumb and Democrat tweedle-dumber. Sadly the Democrats disappointed me as much as the GOP. I did a write in for Rudy because it would be a cold day in hell before I voted for either of those unprincipled SOB’s.

Did I learn then? Not really. Because I then spent the next four years saying “Anyone but Romney.” Why because he hadn’t expressed his ideas well in his faceoff with McCain and his record as Governor of Massachusetts didn’t speak well for him. And because I didn’t think it could really get worse than a weak conservative. Dear God was I wrong again.

Yes I had the hope of Rudy (dashed) and the possibility of a real conservative, Bachman (also dashed) going for a few months. And very, very sadly the GOP field offered very few options. I’m not going to talk about the ones who have already left, why bother, but right now my choices other than Mitt comes down to Gingrich, Santorum, and Paul. Gingrich is a man who is showing himself to have the emotional control of a 2 year old and who by attacking Romney’s career in the private sector is showing that he doesn’t know a thing about economics and business. Clearly not a good leader or a good conservative. Santorum, a religious loon who doesn’t respect individualism, so how can he possibly respect capitalism or the free market, who wants to institute some kind of Christian Sharia. And while Ron Paul sounds like he understands economics, his actions show him to be a terrible leader and terrible person, and he knows less than nothing about foreign policy (or ethics)…and I’m actually now convinced that the U.S. would be worse off after 4 years of Paul than it would after 4 more years of Obama (not that either version wouldn’t involved America in a smoldering pile of rubble).

So I have gone from “anyone but Romney” to Romney has my vote.” And I will never be saying “Any but ______” again. But, I will admit that the Romney I was so opposed to isn’t the Romney I’m now seeing.

Yeah, I want the 2nd coming of Reagan. But I’m not getting it this time round. Do I still have my concerns about Mitt? Yeah. I do. But the fact is that he is talking about different things than he did before…if Bain Capital had been more in the forefront last time I might have actually been able to get behind him, it shows he actually knows how to be a leader and knows what makes the economy run. Also he now seems to be backing off some of the things in did in Massachusetts with an argument that boils down to “you try to do better with the liberal legislature I had to deal with.” I feel that if we just keep the House, take the Senate and get more Tea Party blood in both we’ll be fine with Romney.

Oh if he had spoken 4 years ago like he did after the New Hampshire win, I would definitely have backed him 4 years ago. Take a look.

“What defines us as Americans is our unwavering conviction that we know it must be better”

A little vague, but he certainly understands America in this vague statement better than anything Obama (who only speaks in vague generalities “We are the ones we have been waiting for”)

“President Obama wants to put free enterprise on trial. In the last few days, we have seen some desperate Republicans join forces with him. This is such a mistake for our party and for our nation. This country already has a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy.”

He clearly understands that free enterprise is what is going to get us out of our mess and that his opponents are more RINO than he will ever be for critiquing his acts at Bain.

“Make no mistake, in this campaign, I will offer the American ideals of economic freedom a clear and unapologetic defense.”

The only thing that could make me love this statement more is seeing him back it up, which I actually think he will.

“President Obama wants to ‘fundamentally transform’ America. We want to restore America to the founding principles that made this country great

You know, like freedom that thing Obama and Santorum are so opposed to. And being the shining city on a hill a concept that an evil little troll like Paul will never understand.

And then of course there is this…I have no complaints about any of this. I am hoping that we are now seeing the real Romney, free of advisors telling him to play the moderate, in action.

“Our campaign is about more than replacing a president; it is about saving the soul of America. This election is a choice between two very different destinies.

“He wants to turn America into a European-style entitlement society. We want to ensure that we remain a free and prosperous land of opportunity.

“This president takes his inspiration from the capitals of Europe; we look to the cities and small towns of America.

“This president puts his faith in government. We put our faith in the American people.

“He is making the federal government bigger, burdensome, and bloated. I will make it simpler, smaller, and smarter.

“He raised the national debt. I will cut, cap, and balance the budget.

“He enacted job-killing regulations; I’ll eliminate them.

“He lost our AAA credit rating; I’ll restore it.

“He passed Obamacare; I’ll repeal it.

“When it comes to the economy, my highest priority as president will be worrying about your job, not saving my own.

“Internationally, President Obama has adopted an appeasement strategy. He believes America’s role as leader in the world is a thing of the past. I believe a strong America must – and will – lead the future.

“He doesn’t see the need for overwhelming American military superiority. I will insist on a military so powerful no one would think of challenging it.

“He chastises friends like Israel; I’ll stand with our friends.

“He apologizes for America; I will never apologize for the greatest nation in the history of the Earth.

“Our plans protect freedom and opportunity, and our blueprint is the Constitution of the United States.

“The path I lay out is not one paved with ever increasing government checks and cradle-to-grave assurances that government will always be the solution. If this election is a bidding war for who can promise more benefits, then I’m not your president. You have that president today.

“But if you want to make this election about restoring American greatness, then I hope you will join us.

“If you believe the disappointments of the last few years are a detour, not our destiny, then I am asking for your vote.

“I’m asking each of you to remember how special it is to be an American.

“I want you to remember what it was like to be hopeful and excited about the future, not to dread each new headline.

“I want you to remember when you spent more time dreaming about where to send your kids to college than wondering how to make it to the next paycheck.

“I want you to remember when you weren’t afraid to look at your retirement savings or the price at the pump.

“I want you to remember when our White House reflected the best of who we are, not the worst of what Europe has become.

“That America is still out there. We still believe in that America.

“We still believe in the America that is a land of opportunity and a beacon of freedom. We believe in the America that challenges each of us to be better and bigger than ourselves.

“This election, let’s fight for the America we love. We believe in America.

There is something terribly, terribly wrong when Canada and the U.K. rank higher than the U.S. in terms of economic freedom.

The 2011 edition of Economic Freedom of the World, published by Canada's Fraser Institute (with help from groups like Cato), has been released. Covering data through 2009, the new report provides damning evidence of the negative impact of the Bush-Obama policies of bigger government and more intervention. Here's a relevant passage from the Executive Summary. The world’s largest economy, the United States, has suffered one of the largest declines … Read More

President Obama may have a buddy-buddy relationship with big labor, but he's no friend to ordinary workers. Here are four damning pieces of evidence. 1. The unemployment rate remains above 9 percent according to the Labor Department data released on Friday. This is about 2-1/2 percentage points higher than Obama promised if would be at this stage if we adopted the failed stimulus. This is a spectacular failure. 2. Black unemployment has jumped to … Read More